They walked briskly down a wide, all-white corridor that was lined on one side with vast glass windows looking onto the main thoroughfare in and out of the town. Although it was busy with sluggish traffic, no noise permeated here, a muffled hush maintained by murmuring voices, soundproofed walls and soft-close doors.
‘Mamma, why are we in a hospital?’ Linus asked her curiously, ogling a tray of filled specimen pots being wheeled past on a trolley.
Hanna stopped outside a door and crouched down so that they were eye to eye. She fiddled with the collar of his jacket and smoothed his hair behind one ear, gazing at him lovingly but seeming to see beyond him somehow too, as though searching for another face within his. ‘Because they serve the best – the very best – ice cream in town. Right here.’
Linus blinked back at her. His expression was complacently blank, but Bell knew he was perplexed as to why anyone – even a nine-year-old boy – would want ice cream at ten o’clock on a cold December morning. ‘Oh. Okay.’
‘Do you want an ice cream?’
He nodded unenthusiastically. ‘Sure.’
The door to their right opened and a nurse came out, smiling over at them perfunctorily as she began walking down the corridor, carrying various utensils on a tray. The door immediately began to swing closed on its hinges, but not before Bell glimpsed a narrow montage of the scene within: several doctors were standing around a bed. There was the usual array of high-tech machinery banking the room, and – rather less usual – a large contemporary abstract print on the wall.
‘But, before we do that –’
Bell turned back to them, hearing the tension flex in Hanna’s voice again. How was she going to do this? How was she going to reintroduce her son to his long-absent father?
Hanna took a big breath. ‘There’s someone I thought you’d like to meet.’
Linus blinked back at her, perfectly still. ‘Who?’
Hanna froze momentarily. ‘. . . An old friend.’
‘Of yours?’
‘Of both of ours. But you were very little the last time you met, so you may not remember.’ Hanna tipped her head fractionally to one side, as though it was a question, a nudge to remember a long-forgotten face.
Linus glanced over towards the wide door, as though sensing the mystery friend was behind it. ‘Did I like her?’
‘Actually, she’s a he. And yes, you did, very much. You were the –’ Her voice faltered suddenly. ‘You were the best of friends.’
‘What’s his name?’ Linus asked.
Hanna blinked, her smile stuck on her face but the fear gathering in her eyes again. Bell could see her courage slipping away like a tide; her body seemed to stiffen in the pose, becoming implacable and defensive. ‘. . . Well, why don’t we go in and you can introduce yourself?’
What?
Bell frowned. Hanna wasn’t going to leave it to Linus to work out the connection on his own, surely? But though her mouth opened in protest – like Max’s – he wasn’t her son, and she had to stay quiet as Hanna rose up, holding his hand. They turned to go in.
The door opened with a swoosh, the faint suckering of the draughtproofing brushes punctuating the quiet, and the group of doctors surrounding the bed turned as one. Their gazes swept over Hanna and settled downwards, on Linus.
‘Ah, Hanna, you’re back,’ one of them said from the far side of the bed, and Bell recognized the woman’s voice from the phone call yesterday. Dr Sorensen. Her voice had a pointed quality to it, as though her words carried hidden meaning.
The door closed, clamping down on any leaky audio from the outside world, hermetically sealing them in a pristine environment. Bell hung back against the wall, casting a curious gaze around the room and immediately feeling her own past reattach to her with sticky fingers. She was, sadly, no stranger to hospital rooms, but this was unlike any she had ever seen. She could still see at night, when she closed her eyes, the metal bed frames, the linoleum floor, the smell of antiseptic, the blue-tinged strip lights. But in here, there were framed photographs on a cabinet by the bed, expensive bed linen with a camel-coloured Hermes ‘H’ cashmere blanket, a potted weeping fig tree in one corner, a comfortable red linen armchair, and artwork on the walls that looked like it required insurance certificates. Was this the reality of long-term care? Personalize the environment in